


The Day After The Darkness

by coalitiongirl_ficlets (coalitiongirl)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 02:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4286871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl_ficlets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are all kinds of rumors the day after the darkness comes to town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Day After The Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> back to posting tumblr fics! this one was inspired by ethan's post [here](http://ethan-8.tumblr.com/post/119975269268/emma-becoming-the-dark-one-is-a-tale-that-will-be).

There are all kinds of rumors the day after the darkness comes to town. People talk about the savior and her sacrifice and Ava listens silently, remembers Emma as the awkward woman who’d talked too much about herself like she hadn’t known where she’d belonged and tries to imagine her as terrifying like the Queen or the Blind Witch or Rumplestiltskin. She can’t picture it, but there are girls already whispering about it when she gets to school, flushing and giggling and falling silent when Miss Blanchard walks into the room, her eyes dark and hollow.

Henry Mills doesn’t come to school that day or the next or the next, and Mayor Mills stays locked up in her mansion and hasn’t picked up her car from Dad’s shop yet.

* * *

Emma had been dating that pirate captain who hangs around the docks. That’s what everyone keeps talking about, that he’d run to her and she’d pushed him away and channeled a maelstrom of energy to her like a lightning rod, saving Mayor Mills in the process. Everyone keeps saying it in hushed tones, shrugging it off with visible discomfort.  _She did it for the town,_ Melody says.  _She did it because she’s the savior,_ Rasheed insists.

The excuses come in flurries as though there’d ever been need for excuses at all.  _She did it for their son. She was suicidal._  Mike from the other class has been insisting since the beginning that it had been for the pirate, that it hadn’t been about Mayor Mills, that  _Mayor Mills never mattered._

“Of course she’d mattered,” Miss Blanchard says at lunch one day. “They were good friends. That’s what good friends do.” She’s threading Cheerios onto a birdhouse decoration and the thread snaps in her hand. Her face is very tight.

Melody says, “Sacrifice her soul for her?” and she’s clenching and unclenching her fists, tension in her eyes, and Ava touches her hand until she breathes.

* * *

Mayor Mills is silent and withdrawn when she returns to office and Henry is wary when he stalks into the school one day, glaring around at everyone and raring for a fight. Someone leaves a drawing on his desk that first day that has him shoving the other kid, throwing him back against the wall and beating his fists against his face until the principal retrieves Henry and calls his mother to pick him up.

Mayor Mills walks through the halls, ignoring the whispers and the stares, and she grips Henry’s hand as they walk out of the building. “Wait–!” Ava calls, and they both turn slowly. She doesn’t know what she wants to ask. Melody is hovering behind her and Ava gathers her thoughts and says, “Did Emma really sacrifice herself for you?”

Mayor Mills looks pained. Two teachers frown deeply at her, one more hostile than the other. The other kids snicker and Melody’s hand slips into hers. Mayor Mills glances down at them and then up to meet Ava’s eyes and she says, “Yes.”

* * *

People avoid the Millses now but it’s different than how they used to, when Mayor Mills was in charge and everyone was afraid. Now there are whispers that follow them everywhere like only a small town can carry and people who watch her- not with wariness, exactly, but not curiosity either. Grace always smiles at Henry and at Mayor Mills now. Dr. Hopper opens a door for Mayor Mills the first time Ava sees her walk into Granny’s since the sacrifice. Everyone seems to have a new opinion on the mayor, on the savior, on whatever had happened that night, and everyone seems to feel differently about it.

“A modern fairytale,” Granny murmurs, watching the Millses, and she’s troubled and intrigued at once.

* * *

Henry is an Author now of some sort and Ava doesn’t really know what that means except that he writes feverishly and then asks her to help with the illustration.  _Practice,_ he calls it, and she comes to his house one afternoon even though Dad hadn’t wanted her to go and Nick had muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath.

Ava doesn’t expect that Mayor Mills will be there until she remembers that Henry hadn’t seen the sacrifice either, that there are only five people who had and the rest are all tight-lipped and white-faced about it.

Mayor Mills describes the scene and Ava draws and there they are. There’s Mayor Mills, being released by the cloud of black smoke. There are the other four, standing arrayed on the opposite side of the cloud. There’s Sheriff Swan, hand outstretched to the sky as she calls the darkness to devour her instead.

* * *

Ava kisses Melody under the bleachers after school and Melody stumbles back from her, her brown skin darkening even more and her eyes wide and terrified. “We can’t,” she says.

“Emma did,” Ava says obstinately. “The queen did.” She doesn’t know if there’d been kissing or anything other than a dagger in the air and  _You’ve worked too hard to have your happiness destroyed_ but it’s enough to scare the town into hushed discontent. (“Why couldn’t they keep it to themselves?” one man at Granny’s this morning had complained. “No one asked for them to bring all  _that_ into the public eye.”) (Someone else had spoken up and they’d mocked him for his tension and Ava had left in a hurry.)

Melody says, “Did Emma really?”

When they kiss again, Ava thinks of a page in a book with no name and Mayor Mills sitting opposite her with her eyes glued to the drawing of Emma.

* * *

When Emma comes back into town, her eyes stand out on her sallow face like pinpoints of blue-green and the pirate and her parents come rushing to her. She turns her head and finds Henry instead, and then Mayor Mills, the two of them exiting Town Hall together.

She breaks into a run as she crosses Main Street and flies toward them, and Henry catches Emma first and she sags into his arms. And then she twists, her pale face coming to life, and she’s pulling Mayor Mills close, both of them teary-eyed as they clutch onto each other.

The hushed whispers grow louder, and louder, and louder, and Ava glares and Henry glares and people begin to look away. Slowly, gradually, others stare in open wonderment and confusion and hope, and the sun casts shadows everywhere but where the savior and the queen stand entwined.


End file.
